The background: There are bad New Bands, there are promising ones, there are even a few great ones. And then there are those who you just know are going to dominate the scene for the next few months at least. Many of the agenda-setting new bands we've praised in this column over the last year have been American - Fleet Foxes, MGMT, Black Kids, Boy Crisis, Hockey, Amazing Baby, Chairlift - which somewhat makes a mockery of, or renders redundant, the notion of British-only music awards like the Brits and the Mercury Prize. How can geography be a criterion when you're measuring musical worth?

Violens, to be geographically precise, belong in the pantheon of Great New New York Bands. They only formed last winter, but already they're responsible for some highly accomplished and beautifully realised music, with the emphasis on the "beautiful". We say that because we assumed from their name (pronounced vy-lenz) that they were going to be some sort of sub-Sonic Youth art-drone collective, when actually their breezy psychedelia recalls the late-60s sunshine-pop heyday of The Zombies, The Left Banke and their ilk, only with a shiny 80s production. Some of it really is rather lovely, but then if you see their name as a conflation of "violence" and "violins" it makes sense, and suits these lushly orchestrated songs about nightmares, the passage of time, speculations on spiritual messages and accounts of drug-induced hallucinations.

They've got a track called Doomed, which again we feared from the title was going to be goth-by-numbers when actually it's as light and airy as a 1968 hit by the Association or the Fifth Dimension, even if the ba-ba-ba's and harmonies are almost creepily immaculate. Already Over is just as good, all softly strummed guitar - Johnny Marr at his most blissfully Roger McGuinn-like - and gorgeous aah-aahs, like some spacey 21st century Beach Boys.

Fans of The Shins and any of the Elephant 6 outfits like Olivia Tremor Control or Neutral Milk Hotel will be in raptures. They do make strange detours - Trance Like Turn sounds like postpunk avant-minimalists Wire on those few occasions when they evoked The Byrds - but you can imagine them working within the context of an album of latter-day baroque pop. Take, for example, the martial, pounding symphonic rock of March IV Violent Sensation Descends, which is like something Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd might have knocked up in his sleep for a B-side of one of the singles off The Soft Bulletin. It would make a strong album opener, not that we're telling them what to do.

We should mention MGMT, although we know the other Brooklyn bands are nervous about being seen as riding on their coattails. Nevertheless, the facts remain: Violens' lead singer, guitarist and producer Jorge Elbrecht recently remixed MGMT's single Time To Pretend; the band's debut performance was at NYC's Bowery Ballroom supporting MGMT and Yeasayer; next month they will play their first ever UK shows as main support for MGMT, following a special Halloween party with Brooklyn's best up-and-coming acts, including Chairlift and, yup, MGMT.

But then, if they can produce a whole album as good as Doomed, Trance Like Turn and Already Over, it's MGMT who will be following in Violens' slipstream.

The buzz: "Ever wondered what The Shins might sound like if they'd ever taken an enormous amount of happy drugs with Arthur Lee, Jim Morrison and the rest of the '60s West Coast Elektra set?"

The truth: Another fine new New York band. Sorry. We promise to bring you a crap one at some point.

Most likely to: Use violins.Least likely to: Be violent.

What to buy: The Violens EP is released by Deadly Records on November 10.